Automation Anywhere Enterprise

Walkthrough: Excel Commands

Made By
Ajay Mehta
Senior Product Trainer
Automation Anywhere

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Objective of Walkthrough
The objective of this walkthrough is to make the end user comfortable with the excel
commands and he is comfortable with writing data into excel and also reading data from
excel to various other compatible software’s.

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Example 1: Reading Data from a CSV/TXT and writing into
a Excel spreadsheet

1) We create a TXT file with the following data as seen below

Name, Age
ABC, 10
Def, 20
Ghi, 30
Jkl, 40
Mno, 50

2) We can also create a blank .xlsx file and save it in advance .

3) Open the Automation Anywhere Client as below :-

4) Next we need to open the Task Editor .

5) We click on “New -> Task Editor” to open the Task Editor .

6) We choose “Read from CSV/Text” as below from the commands in the Task Editor as
below

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 Specify Text/Csv file from
which data will be read

We specify
the file
delimiter,
which in our
case is comma

7) We then choose “Excel – Open Spreadsheet“as below

8)The following dialog opens as below

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 As seen above we are specifying our excel file name where we have to write in after
reading from the csv file , this is the same blank excel file that we created earlier .

9)Next we want to position to cell “A1“ in excel , so that the write operation in our excel
sheet takes from that point , we choose “Excel – Goto Cell” command for the same , as
below

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10) Next we get inside the loop and start writing into the spreadsheet using “Excel -> Set
Cell” as below

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Pressing F2 will popup the following dialog as below :

We choose “Filedate Column” variable as seen above and click on insert which opens
another dialog as below , where we have to insert the column no as below

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For the first column , we will enter value as “1” , so that the final dialog looks like below

11) This will enter data as below , in our excel file

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 Data
Entered in
Cell A1

Next , we want data to be entered in cell B1 , for that Active cell has to be made one right
of the current cell as below

Change
Active
Cell to
one
right.

12) For the above , we will use “Excel -> Goto Cell” as below

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13) The above command will position to the next column and we are good to assign value
to this new cell as below using “Excel – Set Cell” as below

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Pressing F2 will popup the following dialog as below :

We choose “Filedate Column” variable as seen above and click on insert which opens
another dialog as below , where we have to insert the column no as below

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We will choose 2 this time, as we need to write the value of the second column, so the
final dialog looks as below:

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14) Value is now entered in B1

So, the first row from the Text file is successfully written into the first row of our Excel
sheet, now for the next write operation the active cell has to be A2 as below

This will be achieved using two “Excel – Goto Cell” commands , the first will move the
current cell one down

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The Next “Excel – Goto Cell” will move it to the beginning of the row , in this case to A2 as
seen below

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This will take care of moving and writing in the spreadsheet.
15) Last but not the least we need to close the spreadsheet using “Excel – Close
Spreadsheet”

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16) Our Script Looks like as below

17) We choose “Save Task” and then we choose “Run Task”

18)The Task executes and our excel is populated with data from our CSV/TXT file .

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Example 2: Reading Data from an Excel File and Writing
Into a Access Database

1) We first create an excel file and type some data into it as below

2) Also, we create a blank access database, create a table as below. We save the
database as .mdb.

This table has two fields “Name” and “Age” as seen above .

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3) We choose “Excel – Open Spreadsheet” command to open the spreadsheet and start
reading from it as below :

4)

The following dialog opens where we specify the path to our excel file which we have
to read as below

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5) Next we choose “Database – Connect” command as below :

6) The following dialog opens

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This opens the following window as below :

7)We give complete path of .mdb , and click on “Test Connection” , we should get “Test
Connection Succeeded” as below

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8)Next , we click on “Save” as below

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The database connection is created .

9) We create three variables col1 , col2 and isempty as below . The variable isempty will
act as a flag to keep a check on how many iterations need to be done over the excel file
till it reaches the end . col1 and col2 variables are used to hold the values read from
column 1 and column 2 of the excel file respectively .

Open variable manager by clicking on “ ” . Next we click on “Add” as

seen below :

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For isempty variable :

For col1 variable :

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For col2 variable :

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10) Next we choose “Excel – Goto Cell” to position our read from cell A2 as the first
row contains column names i.e “Name” and “Age” .

11) Next we choose “Loop – Condition” command to iterate over the excel rows and
read the contents

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12)Next we choose “Excel – Get Cells” as below

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 The value of the currently active cell is assigned to variable col1 .

13)Data is read from cell A2 as below :

Data Read
from Cell
A2

Next , we want data to be read from cell B2 , for that Active cell has to be made one right
of the current cell as below

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 Change
Active
Cell to
one
right.

12) For the above , we will use “Excel -> Goto Cell” as below

13) Now we need to read value of current cell in col2 using “Excel – Get Cell” as below

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The value of the current cell is assigned to variable col2

14)Next we need to go one cell down and to the beginning of the next row using “Excel ->
Goto cell” as illustrated below :

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Then we need to go to the beginning of the next row :

The above is so that the next read can take place from column 1 of the next excel row

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For this , we do as below using “Excel – Goto Cell”

15) We have successfully set the navigation within our excel sheet for picking up
information
16)Next we choose “If Else – Variable “ , to check if the last read was not successful(i.e if
we have reached the end of our excel file )

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The above code checks if the value of “col1” is empty , if true we will assign the value “2”
to “isempty” variable , setting the flag condition to indicate end of read from excel .

17)We use the “ ” command to assign the value “2” to our “isempty”
variable as below

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18)Also , we insert value’s into our database which we have read from our excel files and
stored into variables col1 and col2 , after checking that col1 is not blank as below , Again
“If Else – Variable” is used

Only if the above condition is true do we use the “Database – Insert/Update/Delete”

command as below

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19)Finally we disconnect from the database , using “Database – Disconnect” command as
below

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20)We choose “Save Task” and then “Run Task”

Our Script looks like as above :

21)We get our database populated as below

22)We have been successfully able to copy data from excel to access as seen above .

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